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N. Scott Robinson PDF Press Kits - Click on Parts I & II

*2-Page E-Press Kit I: Performance Options, Review Quotes & Bio - file size: 414 KB

*6-Page Press Kit II: Several Pages of Reviews & Articles - file size: 5 MB

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CD Press Releases

Things That Happen Fast - N. Scott Robinson

World View - N. Scott Robinson

CONCERT POSTERS - 8 1/2" X 11" PDF

N. Scott Robinson - file size: 290 KB.

Handful Duo (N. Scott Robinson & Glen Fittin) - file size: 120 KB.

Handful Trio (N. Scott Robinson, Nolan Warden & Glen Fittin) - file size: 129 KB.

Mark Holland & N. Scott Robinson Duo - file size: 4.04 MB

Peter Phippen, Mark Holland & N. Scott Robinson Trio - file size: 4.15 MB

VIDEOS - Choice of files: WMV, Flash, or QuickTime

1) N. Scott Robinson - Bodhran solo

2) N. Scott Robinson - Ghaval solo

3) N. Scott Robinson - Riq solo

4) N. Scott Robinson - Cajon solo

5) Mark Holland (Native American flute) & N. Scott Robinson (sanza) - Duo

6) Peter Phippen (bansuri), Mark Holland (quena) & N. Scott Robinson (riq) - Trio

7) N. Scott Robinson, Nolan Warden & Glen Fittin - Handful Trio

Interviews: Scroll down for both

Interview 1 - "Interview with N. Scott Robinson: Master Hand Percussionist."

By Mark Holdaway for Kalimba Magic News 2, no. 2 (1 March 2007).

KM: This month's interview is with N. Scott Robinson, a master of hand percussion. Scott, you've got a great kalimba/mbira website!

NSR: Thanks so much! I'm working on getting some more tunings up there. Joel Laviolette is going to help me with a few of the missing tunings from Zimbabwean instruments. He's traveled all over Mozambique and Zimbabwe and plays many types of traditional mbira. His website has recordings of types such as chi-sanza, munyonga, mbira dza VaNdau, and others.

KM: Scott, you play a lot of different percussion instruments at a very high level - but instead of starting in on the kalimba, I'd like to ask you about the tambourine. One might recall images of the singer absent-mindedly hitting the tambourine against their hip. But you treat the tambourine as a serious instrument.

NSR: In my senior year of high school, I knew I wanted to study music seriously. My main instrument was drumset so I began investigating as many styles of music as I could that drumset was used in - society, rock, funk, jazz, Latin, etc. I felt that I didn't have a chance of being accepted in a college music program unless I played every style of percussion so I began investigating percussion in classical music with timpani and xylophone studies, studied piano to get music theory together, and I pursued ethnic percussion as part of this process.

Richard Graham lived in a neighborhood near me on the New Jersey shore and was recommended, so I went to him and told him I wanted to learn everything I could. It must have sounded crazy at the time as I really had no idea of what I was really trying to accomplish but he introduced me to a whole other world of percussion. Richard Graham was a professional who had studied or played with all of the greats from Airto Moreira, Naná Vasconcelos, Collin Walcott, Badal Roy, to Glen Velez, Dom Um Romão, Guilherme Franco, Armen Halburian, Babetunde Olatunji, as well as many of the great Latin percussionists. He was a guy who knew a lot and shared everything with me. At our first lesson (I was about 17); he showed me the kalimba, berimbau, riq, and pandeiro. I was just knocked out by these instruments, their sounds, techniques, and musical possibilities.

I studied with Richard for about a year and he did everything for me. Besides showing me music, he took me to record stores, places to get instruments in New York (there weren’t any companies making much besides Latin stuff in those days), to libraries and showed me what books to read. From him, I got the basics on many kinds of percussion styles and an approach to being creative.

I ended up at Berklee College of Music for a while where I was surprised no one played the instruments I knew about. At that time (1983-1984), there were few teachers that knew about some of the more exotic frame drums like the riq. I saw Glen Velez in Boston and he just lit a fire of interest in me like few have done before. After Berklee, I went to William Paterson College in NJ in 1985 where I studied classical percussion and played briefly with the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble. I ran into the same thing there. The only time I saw anyone with a kalimba was a piano player who had to play one in a George Crumb piece. When I returned to NJ, Richard Graham suggested I go study with Glen Velez so I did and he was very much like Richard to me. He was a real guide in my musical development in a way that impacted other parts of my life.

I think my attraction to playing tambourines intensified around this time. I can remember clearly listening to an Oregon piece with Collin Walcott and just crying because it sounded so beautiful. I realized I would never be able to play something that was considered beautiful on a drumset. But the ethnic percussion was a path for me to reach this goal of playing something that reflected beauty, was more personal, and was at a higher level of musicianship than I was capable of on a drumset.

For me, the tambourines and frame drums offer such a rich assortment of timbres on a small, soft instrument on which I use my fingers as opposed to a large assortment of loud instruments struck with sticks. It fit my quiet personality more so than the drumset did so these kinds of instruments became my focus. The other thing that was going on was my mixing rhythmic and technical ideas on all of these instruments and drumset and jazz were big components in what I was developing on tambourines and the other ethnic percussion.

KM: Scott, you are into the frame drum and the kalimba - have you seen the Sansula? It is a kalimba permanently mounted on a frame drum.

NSR: Yes, I have seen this combo. It works quite well. I started using a large frame drum as a resonator for my kalimba back in 1988 when I was playing for modern dance classes at Rutgers University. If you tune the drum to go with your kalimba tuning, it responds a bit better. The drum increases the resonance and volume quite a bit.

KM: So, your personal musical path seems to deal with beauty and subtlety. That leads us to the kalimba.

NSR: My first kalimba was a Kenyan tourist model that was tuned to a pentatonic scale. My instruction on it was how to play in a creative personal way not how to play any traditional music from Africa. Plus I had a role model at the time for doing that type of approach. I was listening to Collin Walcott’s recordings with Codona and Oregon where he played a sanza tuned pentatonically [this tuning is at the end of the interview]. His instrument was actually a kondi from Sierra Leon. I soon became frustrated with the simple instrument I had and was trying to emulate what I was hearing on those recordings. I got a Hugh Tracey alto kalimba and took half the keys off and retuned it and put on some buzzers. It wasn’t any closer to what I heard on those recordings but it was a world of difference in terms of sound quality, pitch, and what I could do with the instrument. That was my main kalimba for many years and it still is for improvising. I experimented with different tunings but the one I use most is a minor pentatonic tuning. The other thing that happened to me was once I set out on this path of developing a personal and creative approach to using these instruments, I had always found myself in musical contexts where this approach was desired. I played a lot of jazz over the years and jazz musicians were always open and flexible musically to new ideas. There were several musicians that I would pull the kalimba out for and we would improvise special musical moments together. The other context was working with modern dance for about 11 years at Rutgers University in New Jersey. This required me to improvise in very unusual tempii and rhythmic structures and the kalimba worked very well for that.

KM: I have started taking half the tines off of the Hugh Tracey treble kalimba, leaving 9 - I call this the Treblito. But you take half the tines off of the alto, leaving 8. How did you tune your alto with 8 tines?

NSR: Richard Graham showed my how take the 15 notes alto kalimba and take 7 notes off and retune it to a pentatonic minor scale. Then we put buzzers on the back ends of the lamellae. It was really an attempt to copy what Collin Walcott was doing with the sanza. I used to keep it in Ab but found I could sing better by lowering it to G. All of my instruments are set up to be played starting with the left hand in the center and alternating L, R, L, R, etc. to go up the scale. So the tuning I use on it is G, Bb, C, D, F natural, G, Bb, C. I sometimes change one note in the scale to have a different mode.

KM: All of my kalimbas are set up to be played starting with the right hand in the center. I'm right handed. Are you left handed?

NSR: Yes! But I do play most things right handed. For me, setting up the kalimba this way makes it more like a piano with my accompaniment patterns on the left side (like the bass of the piano) and the melody or improve stuff on the right side.

KM: It seems you have a fundamentally rhythmic way of playing kalimba. How do you also approach the melodic and harmonic aspects of the kalimba as an instrument?

NSR: While I was a student in jazz and classical music programs at Rutgers University in 1989-1994, I realized that what I was doing on the kalimba was mainly rhythmic and modal. I was always careful about tuning each lamella precisely and knowing what pitch I was playing, what mode I was in, and if I was in tune with the other musicians. Often, when I heard other percussionists play kalimbas, they would approach it like it were a marimba in terms of playing it melodically in a one note at a time linear fashion. This never really appealed to me because these types of instruments usually have a limited range of notes and are physically arranged in a way that makes it easy to have multiple things going on simultaneously on each side of the instrument. I find it a little awkward to play it purely as a melodic instrument. When I listened to Collin Walcott, I realized that he was also playing in multiple rhythmic style where his right fingers would play a groove on the right side of the instrument and his left fingers would play interlocking patterns on the left side in between what was happening on the right side of the instrument. The resultant parts give the ear the impression that a melody is being played but it is arrived at by playing rhythms. So that is how I deal with melodies on my pentatonic instruments, including my Hugh Tracey. I play it polyrhythmically and modally and the interlocking parts of my hands result in melodic material because the lamellae are tuned to pitches.

As I became more curious about others types of lamellophones and their tunings, I tried to find recordings of as many traditional African types as I could from Tanzania, Sierra Leon, Mozambique, Cameroon, and Zimbabwe. I have always felt that what many of the traditional sub-Saharan African players are doing is similar in that they play their instruments in a rhythmic fashion as accompaniment to a vocal melody. Some of the traditional musics I was checking out had harmonic patterns, so in Shona karimba and mbira dza vadzimu music I was hearing this but found that the overall approach seemed to be about interlocking the hands.

I have become more attracted in recent years to working creatively with some of the traditional instruments in Zimbabwe of the Shona and Kore Kore peoples such as the mbira dza vadzimu, karimba, and matepe respectively. These instruments have an increased range of sometimes as much as 3 octaves and are tuned in ways that are not pentatonic. I had also been improvising on the piano for modern dance classes and had some training in jazz harmony and composition so I understood chord structures and melodic relationships to them. It wasn’t until I started going through B. Michael Williams’ book on mbira dza vadzimu that I realized the heptatonic-tuned instruments are really like a piano in terms of having one hand play a repetitive pattern in the bass register and the other play something melodic on the other side in a higher register. What the Shona players do is more complicated than that, but after learning a few karimba and mbira dza vadzimu songs, I started working with those instruments as if they were a piano and developed a way to improvise on them and wrote a few pieces. Again, I had a context in which to use this kind of playing and was using these instruments and style with Native American flute players R. Carlos Nakai, Mark Holland, Gary Stroutsos, Jeff Ball, and Peter Phippen. I got a few solid body, fully electric, stereo mbira dza vadzimu from Dan Pauli who often puts extra lamellae on so one thing I want to do is work more with original songs while playing these. My latest obsession though is working with an electric ilimba that David Bellinger made for me that has a 4 octave range and a lot of sympathetic lamellae.

When I work with composer and hammer dulcimer player Malcolm Dalglish, it’s a different story. He writes music for choirs with hammer dulcimer and ethnic percussion accompaniment and his instrument and the voices often occupy the higher timbral end of the music spectrum. I find myself often trying to be a bass player in the context of his music by using tuned frame drums, udus, and sanzas to play something in the bass range. He really likes some of my sanzas and asks me to play them often in his pieces but he has a lot of traditional counterpoint going on so there are a lot of chord changes. This makes me have to tune my pentatonic instruments in unusual ways so I have all the pitches and have to play in a way that is unnatural for me to accommodate all the chord changes. The end result is that it sounds great, but I have to really concentrate like an orchestral percussionist in terms of being prepared and executing the parts. It sometimes requires me to start a phrase with my left hand and then suddenly start a new one with the right hand or do odd doublings in some places to execute the part.

So despite my developing a personal approach to playing these kinds of instruments for improvising, I have always had to be flexible musically to adapt to other creative musical contexts that required non-traditional uses of various kalimba, sanza, and mbira.

There are 17 instruments in the above pic:

Left from back forward: mbira dza vadzimu (dongonda tuning) in deze, trio set of mbira dza vadzimu made by Newton Gwara, next to these are 3 more mbira dza vadzimu in different tunings (all from Zimbabwe).

Front center: stereo electric solid body bass mbira dza vadzimu by Dan Pauli.

Right: Hugh Tracey alto kalimba (custom tuning), David Bellinger electric kalimba in Kalimba Magic case.

Back Right: nyunga nyunga (on top of Kalimba Magic case, Zimbabwe).

Center (back): Cuban Marimbula by Dan Yeager, David Bellinger electric ilimba (on top, Tanzania).

In front of marimbula from left to right: sanza, kondi by Rich Goodhart (Sierra Leone, on top, the Collin Walcott sanza), budongo from Uganda, matepe from Zimbabwe by Tschaka Chawasarira.

N. Scott Robinson's Electric Array Mbira by Bill Wesley & Patrick Hadley

KM: Tell us a bit more about your Dave Bellinger ilimba?

NSR: David Bellinger makes fabulous instruments! My David Bellinger electric ilimba is just one of my prized possessions! It has a double keyboard layout side by side, which is common on instruments from Tanzania. I was drawn to Dr. Hukwe Ubi Zawose's music on ilimba and chirimba, but couldn't find much info on him and his instruments. When I spoke to David, he told me he met a researcher who knew Zawose and got his tuning just before he died so I asked David Bellinger to build me an electric version of Zawose's instrument, which has over 50 lamellae. I didn't think he'd be able to come close but he made me just about an exact copy of the Zawose ilimba with a pick up. Mine has 40 lamellae but you only play 20. You play on the outsides of each keyboard and the inner lamellae are all sympathetic so you don't play those. They respond by singing out when you play on the outside areas. The tuning is pentatonic but in traditional intervals to Tanzanian Wagogo music so the intonation does not match Western tuning. There is a chart on my website that shows the tuning. Still it has a 4 octave range which is much larger than I ever had on a pentatonic instrument. It has metal bridges and great brass buzzers and the box is huge. Acoustically, it is very loud and even and that tuning has such a magical sound. Plugged into an amp, it plays like no other instrument I have ever touched. I use a technique on this instrument that works quite well because of the large range. Instead of always alternating my hands (L, R, L, R, etc.), I play in unison but in opposite directions. That means my left hand goes up the keyboard while my right hand goes down and then I interject rapid passages by alternating my hands (L, R, L, R, etc.). Now when I listen to Zawose's recordings, I can find little pieces of what he does by having this instrument in my hands so I am slowly figuring out some of his music.

KM: So, you have an Array Mbira. I would think the Array Mbira is probably something like the Hammered Dulcimer, at least in the way I would play it - find patterns that corresponded to various kinds of chords or chord progressions, or riffs within some chord, learn how to transpose, etc. SO, it is the same sort of thing as a kalimba - something with its own internal logic that we can interact with to create beauty.

NSR: Yes. I just bought an array mbira. It's not really like a dulcimer as those are mostly diatonic but have a different layout than the left to right keyboard arrangement. The array is more like a lead steel pan with a circle of fifths chromatic arrangement but in a straight line like a keyboard and not haphazard like a steel pan.

I think you're right about the inherent beauty of kalimbas and finding ways to play them. I play most of my pentatonic ones in a rhythmic fashion as that's what I hear on a lot of traditional recordings - rhythm and melody. The ones tuned to more 6-7 pitch tunings have some harmonic patterns so I tend to play those that way. Personally, I find when there is a lot of harmony, it limits what you can do rhythmically or it gets in the way sometimes as you have to play only certain notes at certain times and only when the chords change. Music based on rhythm and melody (like African or Indian or Middle Eastern) for me is more free.

KM: Scott - I hear that primacy of the rhythm and melody in your recordings. But my personal music puts at least as much emphasis on the harmonic elements - you sort of define the matrix against the melody rhythmically, while I do it mainly harmonically. I understand it isn't traditional (Andrew Tracey reminds me that African music doesn't have chords).

NSR: I am interested in the Array Mbira because I want to be able to play chord changes and explore more of that kind of playing but don't want to be limited to a diatonic or pentatonic tuning. It's also the background of a person's musicianship. I started out as a drummer and learned piano later. I think guitar has a lot to offer in learning how to use chords with patterns and shapes. That's what is so great about kalimba - you hardly ever find someone else who does exactly what you do. Every person I meet that plays has a different approach to the same instrument. It's pretty cool!

KM: You play a lot of pentatonic kalimba - I am a diatonic guy myself, as I really do like the chords. Meanwhile, you are reaching for the full compliment of western notes on your Array Mbira. Do you ever feel limited on the pentatonic?

NSR: One of the things I don't like about pentatonic instruments that go beyond an octave and 1/2 is that all the left hand bass notes end up on the right side in the second octave. I have to greatly adjust my playing on kalimbas that go beyond an octave and 1/2 when playing in the more rhythmic style that I do.

KM: That's where I like them the best. For an even number of unique notes in the scale, you end up repeating the same patterns on the same sides if you go up or down an octave, for an odd number (5 for the pentatonic, 7 unique notes for the diatonic scale) the upper octave is the mirror image of the lower octave. This opens up a lot of possibilities. Scott, I'm impressed that you've studied with some great people. I myself have never studied kalimba with anyone, and I feel I'm a bit of an orphan. Do you feel your kalimba and mbira music is grounded in tradition?

NSR: My style of playing was pretty much self arrived at. My teachers helped me by explaining how the instrument works and by showing me a few pieces to play on the various instruments I studied. My interest was in developing how to improvise on them and beyond Richard Graham showing me a few things Collin Walcott did, I just developed it myself. I think we both went through a similar process. We both have a solid foundation in music (me in drumming and you in guitar) and draw on that foundation in applying what we know to the instrument. Because of our different backgrounds, we came up with different results in playing style. I think it is important to have some kind of foundation if you are creative. Some people have tried to learn my style but didn't have much of a developed background in music to draw on so it was difficult getting ideas across.

Thank you, Scott!

Here is part of Scott's resume. If you are looking for ideas of what music or what exotic kalimbas to buy, this is probably a good starting point.

Scott studied with:

Richard Graham - kalimba (in Collin Walcott style)
Nolan Warden - 15 lamellae Shona karimba
Cosmas Magaya - Shona mbira dza vadzimu
Tschaka Chawasarira - Shona mbira dza vadzimu, 15 lamellae karimba, and Kore Kore matepe

Scott's influences:

Collin Walcott's sanza playing on recordings by Codona and Oregon
Dr. Hukewe Ubi Zawose's Tanzanian Wagogo ilimba and chirimba playing on his recordings
B. Michael Williams' book on playing mbira dza vadzimu
Paul Berliner's book on his experiences researching various mbira in Zimbabwe in the 1970s

Mbiras and kalimbas Scott plays:

Hugh Tracey alto kalimba (custom tuning)
David Bellinger electric kalimba and electric ilimba
Bill Wesley & Patrick Hadley's array mbira (4 octave chromatic model)
Dan Yeager marimbula
Dan Pauli stereo solid body electric mbira dza vadzimu
Tschaka Chawasarira matepe
Rich Goodhart sanza (copy of Collin Walcott's sanza, which is a kondi from Sierra Leon)
Ugandan budongo, Shona mbira dza vadzimu in various tunings by Shona makers Newton Gwara & Sam Bvure, and 15 lamellae nyunga nyunga (karimba) of the Zimbabwe College of Music.

Colin Walcott's Sansa Tuning

NSR: Collin Walcott's sanza playing is on the tune “Mumakata” on the CD Codona and also on “Hey Da Ba Doom” on Codona 3. It's in a pretty low E tuning (E, F# A, B, D, E, F#, A). There is a picture of his instrument on my website in the gallery marked sanza. The can with the strap is his axe.

KM: About Colin's tuning: If you start on D it is D E F# A B --- the major pentatonic scale. BUT the tuning does not have a complete D to D major pentatonic, so that interpretation is de-emphasized. The relative minor is B, or B D E F# A B -- but AGAIN the complete scale from B to B isn't there. How do YOU understand this tuning?

NSR: In terms of traditional African musics, they don't have this kind of theory that underlies their music making like we have in the West so you can't really look at such scales purely in Western terms. In figuring it out, Rich Goodhart helped me. He studied with Collin Walcott and built a copy of his sanza, which is really a kondi from Sierra Leone. The tuning is the same as is used on the Gambian donso ngoni 6-string harp that kora player Foday Musa Suso showed me. It's a pentatonic tuning centered on E but it is built of intervals we don't commonly use as a scale in the West. It's basically a major scale without the 3rd and the 6th scale degrees.

KM: OK, I see this scale now: E-F#, then A-B, and D-E are each whole steps, but from the F# to the A is a step and a half, as is from B to D.

NSR: Yes, it is like the Indonesian idea of a pelog tuning in that it is a 5 note scale made up from non-equidistant intervals. The major pentatonic scale is more of a scale built from equidistant intervals.

________________________________________________________________

Interview 2 - "N. Scott Robinson: Worldwide Perspective."

Interview by Iasen Kazandjiev on November 1, 2002 for Ethno, Art, and World Music, published in Bulgaria.

IK: How do you feel about yourself as a musician and composer who works in the world music field?

NSR: I don't take myself so seriously as to be called a "composer." I do create a lot of my own music but I construct pieces mainly as vehicles for improvisation and feel I am much better at collaborating than composing by myself. As a musician, I have been interested in so many different things and have learned a lot of different kinds of instruments. My interests are in creative music that features improvising on the variety of percussion instruments I play. There are very few styles of music where I could really use my skills but "world music" is particularly satisfying to me because of the variety of sound and musical choices available to the performer or composer. The term "world music" is often used by ethnomusicologists to refer to the world's traditional ethnic musics but in jazz, this term is sometimes used to describe a mixing of jazz with music and instruments from around the world. The jazz "world music" is how I use the term here.

IK: How would you describe your music style?

NSR: When I was younger I had a lot of experience doing different things such as orchestra, rock, jazz, Brazilian, Arabic, West African, Indian, modern dance, and other styles. Out of everything I had studied, I spent the most time studying jazz, classical percussion, and South Indian frame drumming. I have always felt that no matter how little I studied something, there was always something different about rhythm or hand technique that I absorbed. By the early 1990s, I started to realize that I had a very mixed way of putting ideas about rhythm and technique for hand drumming together. My music balances my various influences from jazz, classical, and world musics. I use a variety of instruments and usually change them from piece to piece to maximize the variety of sounds. Improvising is also an important aspect of my music. Like jazz, I like to have a structure to improvise on but I want to work with different rhythms, melodies, harmonies, and instruments than is typical in jazz. The social aspect of making music is very important to me. I usually have certain friends in mind when I construct a piece and have always felt that the better you get along with someone socially, then the chances of having a meaningful experience making music together will be increased.

IK: What are your plans for the future?

NSR: There are several different things pulling me in different directions. I have had interest from a German label called United One Records, and since 2003 they have released both of my CDs globally. First, my CD called World View and then later, my newest one called Things That Happen Fast. HoneyRock Publishing has just published the sheet music to six of my pieces from these CDs. I enjoy teaching a lot and am now teaching at Towson University in Towson, Maryland. I have been getting a lot of requests to take part in performances and CD projects in the USA, Korea, Japan, France, Bulgaria, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia. I have been feeling for a long time now that Europe is a place I must go and spend some time. There seems to be much better interest and possibilities there for the kind of music I do than in the USA. One of the things I hope to start on soon is an instructional DVD about hand drumming and various tambourine styles. I have music composed and ready for my third CD, Hands All Over, which I will begin recording in 2005. Composing is something I look forward to developing. I am working on some more pieces for frame drums and two commissions at the moment.

IK: What do you think about the fusion between music styles, especially world fusion?

NSR: I am really attracted to the fusion of ideas and instruments from different kinds of music and culture. I grew up at a time when this was quite common in the USA so the view that one has so much to choose from is the way I approach music. The problem is finding the proper context to continue this kind of music making. The music business is really saturating people with the same kinds of music to the point that very meaningful kinds of music have been very under exposed for a long time now. I think people will respond to something new when they find out that there is so much more to choose from than what you find in a store, magazine, TV, or on the radio.

IK: Would you like to collaborate with a Bulgarian music group?

NSR: Yes, definitely! I have met before the Bulgarian group Lot Lorien, and they are very good musicians. Their music was very difficult for me to learn! They really brought my attention to the rich possibilities in Bulgarian music, and I hope to meet up with them one day in the future. I'm told that the newest Lot Lorien CD features a piece that they composed and dedicated to me.

IK: What do you know about Bulgaria and Bulgarian traditional music?

NSR: Not a lot! I do know the music can be rhythmically complex and have seen some great tapan players before. I performed on darbuka once with the Solev Family, a traditional Bulgarian group. They were such great musicians, and it was thrilling to be playing with them and seeing an entire audience dance so energetically to a rhythm in 9 beats! Americans don't dance like that! When I was an undergraduate in music school, a friend played for me the music of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. That music captivated me immediately! I remember listening to it for days and carrying the LP into a music theory class at Rutgers University asking the professor to play it! For Bulgaria itself, I'm sorry to say I know little. Only that the country seems very rich culturally, brimming with beauty, and that it should be a very stimulating place to visit.

IK: Do you know Bulgarian world music bands or musicians?

NSR: Not really. I have only performed briefly with the Solev Family in Cleveland, Ohio in the USA and Lot Lorien in Seoul, South Korea. That's all I know of besides hearing the music of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. My favorite Bulgarian song is "Ei mori roujke."

IK: Ethno, Art, and World Music is the only world music publication of this type in Bulgaria. What would you wish to our readers?

NSR: First I would wish to say thank you so much! This is my very first interview ever in my life. If anyone is interested in finding out more about me or all kinds of world music instruments, they can go to my free website at http://www.nscottrobinson.com where they will find a huge gallery of instruments with photos, sound, and text. There is also information about my CDs and performance schedule. I would also like to say that I wish the very best to the good people of Bulgaria, and that I hope to experience the alluring culture of Bulgaria myself some day soon!